Comments on: Introducing the Local History Project

By: Timothy Kincaid

Timothy Kincaid — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 22:13:54 +0000

Ray,

yes and yes

Pretty much anything that shares your advocacy or your perspective or just some experience, be it personal or on a grand scale. It’s not a competition, it’s a sharing of our lives. History books catch the Name, Date, Place type of events, but we are trying to put the human face on it. It’s the small stuff – or even the small way you impacted the big stuff – that makes a history story real.

This week’s story was Frankie’s. Email us yours.

By: Ray

Ray — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 22:01:11 +0000

I don’t understand what kinds of stories qualify for this project. Stonewall? Lobbying the city council?

My advocacy has been personal. I was close to being a grandparent when the seeming “popularity” of being a gay parent got off the ground. Meanwhile, I’d already been standing my ground as a gay parent in spite of having my house shot at, my property vandalized and my kid taunted. As a family we experience living hell and had to fight back against school teachers, principles, kids and their parents who didn’t want us in the neighborhood. I wouldn’t do it again for **anything** but we were simply against a wall and had no where else to go. So, I didn’t do any the high profile advocacy unless you could call throwing donation dollars at Human Right Campaign and Lamba Legal sufficiently high-profile.

I read today’s story about the Blackfoot boy who was barred from the boy scouts. It was a terrible experience for him but I don’t see how it matches the public advocacy the project asks for. I was pretty much the same kind of gender non-conforming kid and I have the emotional scars to prove it. To “advocate” I have to face down my right-wing, fundamentalist Christian siblings and family just to go to a family reunion or a funeral. And generally speaking, I have to do it all by myself.

By: sueanne

sueanne — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 03:51:55 +0000

The St Louis History Museum has a small area of Gay history. It was so nice to turn the corner with our son and say we were part of this………..

By: Thomas Kraemer

Thomas Kraemer — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:57:19 +0000

Jonathon Ned Katz became a gay history pioneer in the 1970s after he recognized that most minority children, unlike gay children, usually have a family member of the same minority who can share their family history. To help, he set out to preserve gay history, but it was skewed toward LA and NY. In response, he helped start OutHistory.org at the City University of New York. It is now supported by the University of Chicago. In 2010, it got a grant to collect local gay histories. OutHistory recognizes that all history is local. I have seen firsthand the importance of localizing gay history after I submitted one about Corvallis, Oregon State University, I saw young students get hooked in by the local history content and then they went on to learn much more about their own history, which is something that their straight family members could not share with them. I hope any work you collect can also be posted on this important gay history site.

By: Lindoro Almaviva

Lindoro Almaviva — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:41:14 +0000

Unrelated, but important. Hsve you guys seen the quote joe.my.god has o Alan Chambers?

By: Blake

Blake — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:22:51 +0000

Here in Atlanta we have a wonderful program that puts on lectures and discussion groups fairly regularly. Y’all should get in touch.

http://www.touchingupourroots.org/

By: homer

homer — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:57:44 +0000

I have collected LGBT materials from here in Arizona- newspaper articles, copies of magazines and newspapers from the LGBT community, posters, and other materials and have donated these to the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, where it is available as a manuscript collection MS 1437. I did this because there was nothing readily available on the history of our people in any of the major institutions in Arizona. I also encourage other people to do the same.